But I don't need to have finished Uglies to write about what I'm writing about today.
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Netflix has gotten into the habit of shorthanding the appeal of a movie by suggesting it is the love child of two other movies. At the same time, it is complimenting its viewers by considering them familiar with the old show biz pitch shorthand for what a studio exec might expect from a script they are considering buying.
"It's Star Wars meets Casablanca" goes the old pitch, and in theory, the exec's eyes light up with dreams of Oscars and box office dollars. (I don't know what movie that would be, but presumably there is one out there that meets that description.)
So in its descriptions for its movies -- not every movie, because it wouldn't work with every movie -- Netflix has taken to giving you, the viewer, the same sort of pitch, hoping you will watch.
Even when it's hilarious.
Now let me first say that the point of the "Movie A meets Movie B" template is that the two movies are distinctly different from one another. There may be some way they are complementary -- if they aren't in some way complementary, the movie will probably be a disaster -- but you do think of different things when you consider each movie in isolation. The way they blend gives the movie its sense of new vitality, a perfect combination of what a studio considers safe and what a studio considers a safe-ish risk.
So that's why I find the description for Uglies to be particularly hilarious:
"It's Divergent meets The Hunger Games."
Now, I haven't seen Divergent, so you can correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't Divergent itself The Hunger Games meets Divergent? And isn't The Hunger Games itself Divergent meets The Hunger Games?
Obviously Divergent and The Hunger Games are not the same movie. If memory serves, people in Divergent have some sort of mental powers.
But saying that a new YA movie is like the love child of these two movies is kind of like saying that a new teen sex comedy is like American Pie meets Superbad. Or that a new sci-fi movie is like Star Wars meets Star Trek. Or that a new period piece about servants working in a fancy mansion is like Remains of the Day meets Downton Abbey.
I'm not suggesting Netflix is wrong to market movies using this convention. It's clever and efficient. And the average person -- the person who might actually be the target audience of Uglies -- is unlikely to parse the semantics of the recommendation like I am doing here.
I do think there are ways to do it better though.
From the half of Uglies I've seen, I can tell you the movie is about a future society where all citizens are given cosmetic surgery at age 16 to make them beautiful. This makes everyone extremely shallow, except for the stalwart few who resist the mandatory surgery and stay their same "ugly" self. (I'm sorry, but it is not possible to make Joey King ugly.)
If I were trying to replace one of the two movies in the pitch for Uglies with another movie that would deliver us a more nuanced pitch, I might say that it's Divergent meets Gattaca. (While I have not gone out and watched Divergent since writing the above paragraph, this movie does seem to have more in common with Divergent than The Hunger Games.)
Gattaca, as I remember it, was also about beauty and genetic perfection. And it was also set in a world with tall futuristic buildings and young people.
The trouble is, that same average viewer doesn't know Gattaca from Battlestar Galactica from Attica, the prison in New York. ("Attica! Attica!")
And so it is, regrettably, far better for Netflix to say "Obvious thing you know and love #1 + obvious thing you know and love #2 = thing you will obviously love."
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